Gardeners' Notes:

I have enjoyed this plant all my life. As a child I played in fields where it grew in the wild. I don't know if it is imported or not, but in Tennessee it is common and plentiful. I've never gotten a rash from it, and I've handled it all my life. I'm reasonably sure it's not invasive or harmful and it is lovely, a great alternative to baby's breath. Don't fear what you haven't tried. Try it and learn for yourself if you like it.

This plant is non-native and invasive in the US. Do not plant it! It spreads easily and sadly can even be found in some of the highest quality prairies and other habitats. This should never be used as a garden flower, and should be removed and replaced with more appropriate and responsible options.

The skin irritation caused by this plant is not from the plant itself, but from "chiggers" which are teeny tiny insects that live on the plant. When humans come in contact with the plant, the bugs jump on and start eating your skin. Many people in my area put nail polish on the spot to smother the little buggers out.

I am surprised to see so many negative comments for Queen Anne's Lace. Unless you are one of those people who do nothing in your yard and expect miracles, then you will love Queen Anne's Lace. I bought a couple of plants several years ago and I now always have it in my garden. It is in with my day lilies and mums and does extremely well. I cut the flowers and bring them inside for beautiful arrangements. Everybody who visits my yard always comments on the beautiful Queen Anne's Lace. It does not hurt the other plants and is very easy to remove. I cut the pods and let them fall where they may. In the early spring, there may be some little plants in places where I don't want them, so I just dig them and their dirt out and plant them where I do want them. You are probably confusing ... read moreQueen Anne's Lace for the look alike that is extremely invasive and gets seeds on you and everywhere else. Queen Anne is the lady she was named after. She would never do this. If this plant is invasive, then I would really hate to hear how a true invasive plant would rate, like evening Primrose or Kudzoo. I finally got rid of my primrose, but now I have them in a planter and they are doing well. I live in Augusta, Georgia.

I've found that once a single plant has been allowed to go... read more to seed, it's a lot of work to control the seedlings by hand-weeding. And that, if uncontrolled, they crowd out many of the plants I want to grow. Once it's seeded in, you'll never get rid of it. I speak as a professional weed control expert.

If you're considering planting this in your garden, there are several other plants with its ornamental qualities but without its weediness:

Cenolophium denudatum (Baltic parsley)
Ammi majus (an annual)
Chaerophyllum hirsutum (perennial to Z6, the pink-flowered strains are even prettier)
Seseli gummiferum (perennial to Z5)
Selinum wallichianum (a perennial to Z6b, much more beautiful, does not enjoy the hot summers of the southeastern US)

Botanically, the weedy Queen Anne's lace is Daucus carota var carota. Carrots are Daucus carota var. sativa. The roots of Queen Anne's lace get woody before they get thick.

This is not a native plant (wildflower) in the USA. It does come in a lot of "Prairie in a can" or "wildflower mixes", but don't believe it. As for eating it, unless you are a botanist or are well versed in identification of the Apiacea/Umbelliferae, do not eat it. There are too many members of this family that are toxic or deadly.
As for the Heracleum, touching some species may cause skin irritation, others, severe burns. Burns may appear days after exposure and cause purple scarring. H. mantegazzianum sap can cause permanent blindness if it gets into your eyes.
Always look up whether that interesting looking plant is invasive before planting it. Just type the name of the plant (common or scientific) and the work "invasive" into your web browser. Your local or state... read more natural resources or agriculture department invasive speices experts will be able to tell you if your plant has become an invasive species in other areas (a good clue for whether you should plant it or not).
Thank you;
Ramsey County Cooperative Weed Managment Area, Minnesota

I have always loved and tried to grow this plant. I brought some home from a roadside in a town just North of my home. It came up three years in a row, growing very slowly and dying back on occasion. The first year: no blooms. The second: several. This was the third year it finally came up. However, it stayed small and sickly and eventually died. It never self sowed in the area. At the same time, it came up everywhere in the town I got it and people mowed and used herbicide on it all year long. They never got more than a foot or so tall and would stay covered in blooms all year round, looking like cotton from a distance.

My mother loves the flower and even presses them we allow several to grow and often they can grow 4-5 feet here. I find that beneficial insects love it but it is considered invasive so check if there are restrictions to growing it in your area. As far as the burrs... some may be mistaking hemlock or water hemlock for Queen Anne's Lace which not only has tenacious burrs but is also poisonous. Queen Anne's Lace is edible and has a flavor similar to carrot but don't try it unless you are 100% sure of its identification. the seed head of Queen Anne's Lace also forms a cup looking somewhat like a bird's nest whereas the hemlock is more open.

very nice plant to grow.. you never even have to touch it and it will bloom nicely in cracks between your perannuals. if you don't like it somewhere and have nice garden soil its a lot easier to pull it up in its first year when it first sprouts... its also very easy to idenifie .. unless its growing your carrots. it also has a nice fragrance..

Although it's obviously a weed, it's so ubiquitous that minor cultivation is no longer significant. A specimen or two for cut flowers can be likened to a neighbor with dandelions in their lawn, while there are highways and ballfields full of yellow blossoms and fluffy white puffballs. (Believe it or not, those dandelions are better for our health than rivers and streams [and therefore somebody's drinking water] full of broad-leaf herbicides.)

Although many invasives respond to management, some are beyond the point of no return. (Can you stop the wind or the birds from spreading seeds?) They're effectively part of the ecosystem now. Pandora's box is open. Ya can't put them back. What you can do is plant natives to create habitat for wildlife, and prevent new nonnative i... read morenvasives from getting loose. :-)

Ahem, that said, Queen Anne's Lace is a beautiful biennial which is easily dead-headed before ripened. It is a host species to the Black Swallowtail butterfly, and perhaps one of the reasons that's one of the few common large butterflies left.

Queen Anne's Lace is truly Wild Carrot: same genus & species. Therefore, they can be harvested and cleaned for wilderness survival, provided that they are growing far from highways and industrial areas. They thrive in ecotone/edge habitats as well as shortgrass and rocky areas, and spread rapidly in disturbances. They do not thrive in forests or tallgrass prairies where there is too much shade.

They are extremely hardy, tolerating droughts, freezes, and herbivory. Perhaps some of these traits should be bred back into our food crop carrots. ;-)

An introduced pest to the US and considered a noxious weed in many states-meaning it is illegal to ship plants or seed of this pest into that state. The other states have just given up. Classified as a Biennial, it is an ANNUAL here in western Oregon, it is resistant to all pre-emergent herbicides I have tried-meaning NOTHING stops it from germinating, and it blooms and seeds in one season. Mowing doesn't control it except in a turf situation, it just reblooms at a lower height and seeds anyway. Plants form a deep taproot and are very hard to pull or hoe out. Seeds stick to anything and everything so are easily spread, seed heads are very flammable so are a fire hazard here in the west where we get no summer rain. The honey produced from this pest is unfit for human consumption and ... read morecauses losses in the bee industry. Yes it is pretty, there are many pink forms of it here infesting my fields, but it is far more trouble than it is worth looking at..

On Minnesota DNR invasive list. From the website...
Ecological Threat:
It invades disturbed dry prairies, abandoned fields, waste places, and road sides. It is a threat to recovering grasslands and can be persistent on clay soils.
A native of Europe and Asia it now occurs throughout the U.S.
It tends to decline as native grasses and herbaceous plants become established.
Queen Ann's lace is on the MDA Secondary noxious weeds list in Minnesota.

Years ago I found QAL growing in a small area near our home. Apparently it was a gift from a bird. I gathered the seeds and tossed them about. The following year I had even more of them,
and the next year as well. I am currently attempting to get it to spread down a ditch so as to fight the weeds.

To keep it under control where I do not wish it to grow, I simply mow over it.

The fun thing about QAL is to gather a bouquet of it in the summer, then place the cuttings into a glass of food coloring. The blooms will absorb and display the color. Very fun!

The tiny flowers are in tight umbels, white or occasionally tinged with pink. The central floret is purple in the mature umbel. The umbel is first concave, then flat and finally convex. As it fades, it curls into a tight bird nest shape. Three pronged bracts are found below the flower heads. Basal leaves are formed the first year, flower stalks the second year (biennial). A branching plant with a large tap-root and finely divided leaves, and is an ancestor of the cultivated carrot.

Are we talking about the same plant when we talk about Queen Anne's Lace? It sounds to me like some of us are referring to what we call Beggar's Lice or Beggar's ticks here in Texas. This twiggy "noxious weed" grows profusely by the roadsides, etc. and makes seeds that stick to everything like lice. The flower head of this plant is barely 2 inches in diameter. Then some of us are talking about that beautiful 6-inch flowerhead that appears in bouquets and has the Latin name Daucus carota. This flowerhead has a large, hollow stem several feet long. I want to grow Daucus carota/Queen Anne's Lace in my garden, and I am looking for seeds, but I sure don't need beggar's lice seeds. It would be good to know how to ask for one, but not the other.

Noxious weed in more than 35 states. Those who prefer to refer to this plant as a wildflower may not know the difference between a plant that is native that belongs on the continent of North America and one that is introduced that has naturalized and displaced actual native wildflowers. A nice alternative which is exceedingly more beautiful and stately would be Heracleum lanatum.

Although the flowers are pretty this weed has become my worst nightmare. After buying my first house last summer in TX, I was incredibly excited about my first spring and all that I would do in the yard and putting in a new vegetable garden. Unfortunately I spent almost all of March and April pulling this monster from my yard!

Yes, it is a biennial, which is probably why I didn't notice much of it last summer, but OMG nothing will get rid of this stuff except pulling or using RoundUp on it, which of course is not the best thing to do for lawns. So, everyday I would get my little grocery bag and go sit in the yard pulling large clumps of it out. I bet I have filled over 30 bags in the past 2 mon... read moreths and I'm no where near finished! The trick is to gather it up like a pony tail and pull it up.

It will also inhibit your grass from growing in those areas because it's like an umbrella that pushes everything out of its way and blocks the light. I have huge bare patches in the yard now from where it was pulled. My only saving grace is that I have St. Augustine and it will fill in. What a mess!

I adore Queen Anne's Lace - it is definitely one of my favorite wildflowers. I let several fields on my property go ungroomed for wildlife, & am able to gather armloads of this airy flower for bouquets for most of the summer. And as someone else stated, it is an attractor of beneficial insects.

Queen Anne's Lace is in the Umbelliferae plant family (carrot family) and is a food source for beneficial insects. Keep Queen Anne's Lace in your garden, it will attract beneficial insects. The beneficial's will gobble up all the pesky insects and do the work for you! Plants in the Umbelliferae family are known to attract those helpful insects. Queen Anne's Lace is a gardener's friend.

Although it spreads like wildfire, I enjoy Queen Anne's Lace everywhere I see it. I've never seen it so thick that it crowds out other plants, instead, it's a lovely addition to a wildflower meadow and along roadsides.

It does set an amazing number of seeds, but if you want to control it, simply snip off the blossoms after they fade, but before the seed matures.

A mature seed head will close up upon itself and turn a brownish color. This gives it one of it's other common name's, Bird's Nest Plant.

I wish I could grow Queen Anne's Lace in Hawaii. When I lived in SC I would go and collect them from the sides of the road to use in arrangements with other flowers. I planted some in my yard, but it never did much.

One of the lovelies of the wild flowers.

If anyone considers them invasive they don't know what invasive really is......

Last year one grew in my greenhouse. It got started in the raised bed where I had some ginger root from the grocery store planted.I let it grow. I thought it was Ginger Root. I thought the store people had sold me a type of Ginger Root that didn't look like the pictures in the plant books. Nine feet tall and six feet wide. WHAT A PRETTY PLANT!!!
Now they are 6 inches tall from the cracks in the sidewalk to roof height in good soil. About 50 of them. Very pretty, v
ery invasive.
Sedro Woolley, Washington

I find Queen Anne,s lace to be a lovely flower and also very reliable.
No need to baby this one. It does set seed profusely. If you don't want much of it, just remove the seedheads before they mature but leave some for next year. It is a biennial

I live in Northern Michigan and Queen Anne's Lace is in abundance. It can be used as a home remedy in tea or as
a poltice or eaten in salads. It can be toxic in large qunities. Lots of sites world wide. Go to askjeeves.com and type in daucus carota in search box. It also has hallucinogenic properties in the seeds

Queen Anne's Lace is a lovely wildflower to which I have donated 20 square feet in my garden. I make bouquets of daisys, lillies, roses, Iris, glads, and more thru the summer and they are all more beautiful with lots of Queen Anne's Lace to set them off. I have never lost a plant to this lovely flower.